Understanding a Native's Handwriting

 Chinese Native's Speakers Handwriting

Everyone's handwriting is different, even in your first language you probably have encountered someone how wrote in such a strange way that you simply were not able to understand it. When it comes to Chinese writing, things are a bit more complicated, because we need to remember characters, which is not an easy task. Some people also know both traditional and simplified characters, which is also hard, but to all of that there's one more factor to add which is: deciphering someone's handwriting and in my experience this  can be quite tricky.

Why is it so hard to understand a Native's Handwriting ? 

The answer is quite simple, as we all know Chinese characters are complex. The main reason why learners are not able to understand someone's handwriting are strokes, a lot of learners (including me) don't know them all, so when a Native speak who knows all the strokes for most characters write their characters usually look different, because they don't really care about the appearance of the character they care about the strokes order and from that other natives can decipher which character it is. 

It's important to mention that sometimes they create their own ways to write a character something similar to a shortcut, they might skip a stroke or change it just because is it easier, or it helps them write faster. Also, characters change depending on its typography, in my case the one that I have found the hardest is cursive. 

How to understand their handwriting

There's not a specific way to do this, in my experience the only way I have been able to improve is through immersion, for this I like to follow a lot of different Instagram accounts that post quotes, and the more I interact with this type of content the more I understand it.

Also if you ever want to create your own shortcuts when writing characters, it's really important that you are comfortable enough with your skills and that you know you won't forget the correct way to write them. 

Accounts I recommend to get used to different typographies: 

@weakcan @chillwriting @handwriting387 @lazychoisum @lightandsalt._ @ordinary_girl_girl @7__diary @luckylulu0212 @toast_warm_warm @draw_mm_28 @yu.writing_ @pangye_diary @ssredtravel_ @hibbii_ @grizliu.soul (one of the hardest to understand) and @carol08042